2.4 The transformation of a natural resource: from agriculture to agribusiness

2.5 Conflicts over mineral resources

2.6 Development and tribal peoples: resistance to displacement

2.7 Natural resource abuses: a time for change

References

(introductory text...)

Eduardo Tadem

2.1 The ASEAN region: great wealth and great strife2.2 The historical roots of conflict2.3 The
plunder of forest resources2.4 The transformation of a
natural resource: from agriculture to agribusiness2.5
Conflicts over mineral resources2.6 Development and tribal
peoples: resistance to displacement2.7 Natural resource
abuses: a time for changeReferences

2.1 The ASEAN region: great wealth and great strife

The countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) produce a
major portion of some of the world's most essential natural resources. From the
Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore come 82 per
cent of the world's production of natural rubber, 70 per cent of copra and
coconut products, 70 per cent of tin, 56 per cent of palm-oil, and 50 per cent
of hardwood. In addition, the region's seas and rivers account for a significant
share of the world's supply of fish and other marine products. Thailand and the
Philippines, for example, are major tuna exporters to the US market. Thailand is
also one of the world's top rice exporters, and the Philippines boasts the
largest pineapple plantation in the world.

Because of the abundance of vital resources in the countries of the ASEAN
group, the area has been the scene of various local, national, and international
conflicts centring on the use, control, and disposition of natural resources. As
control over resources becomes a paramount issue in the drive for national and
human survival, disagreements and differences in approaches, priorities, and
philosophies emerge. Governments often clash over jurisdiction of lands
containing valuable raw materials such as oil and minerals. On the other hand, a
government often faces opposition from its own citizens regarding the issue of
human rights violations committed by the state as it pursues certain national
strategies of development. These conflicts are often portrayed in official
pronouncements as being between modernity and tradition, but more often than not
the conflict simply reflects the intransigence of institutionalized power and
its propensity to impose bureaucratic and technocratic planning
models.

2.2 The historical roots of conflict

The ASEAN region has been a region of conflict. In varying degrees, the six
member countries are continuing to experience social unrest born out of
conflicts over the use of natural resources and the distribution of the economic
product of this wealth. In the Philippines, a 12,000-man New People's Army (NPA)
guerrilla army led by the Communist Party has been a major thorn in the side of
the government, first to the Marcos regime and now to the Aquino administration,
and a hindrance to the consolidation of power in that country. There has been a
resurgence of land conflicts in Indonesia, raising the spectre of the pre-1965
agrarian unrest. In Malaysia, despite the low profile of the armed leftist
movement, the government feels insecure enough to continue its Internal Security
Act (ISA). Until recently, Thailand was the scene of various encounters between
government troops and a well-equipped leftist guerrilla movement.

A common characteristic of the region is its history of colonial or
semi-colonial rule. With the exception of Thailand, all of the ASEAN states
underwent a period of direct colonial rule, a process that transformed native
societies and incorporated their economies into a world capitalist system.
Thailand's signing of the Bowring Treaty in 1855 put it into a situation similar
to that of its colonized neighbours vis-à-vis the advanced Western nations
(Chiengkul, 1983: 30-1). Colonial economic policies were based on the systematic
plunder of the natural resources of the subjugated nations. The introduction of
Western concepts of property, including private ownership of land, engendered
major conflicts and was the cause of countless anticolonial revolts launched by
dispossessed peasants and ethnic groups. In the massive transfer of wealth
generated by natural resources from the colony to the colonial power,
nationalist elites also saw a justification for the launching of nation-wide
anti-colonial movements, which eventually gained independence for their peoples.
However, foreign exploitation of national resources did not end with the demise
of direct colonialism. The Philippines was forced to accept the 'parity'
agreement, by which American nationals were granted the right to exploit natural
resources with as much ease as Filipinos. Malaya's tin, rubber, and oil-palm
plantations continued to be controlled by the British long after the country
attained independence. Under Sukarno, Indonesia tried to reverse the pattern by
confiscating Dutch estates, but when he was toppled in 1966, his successor,
Suharto, opened the economy to foreign participation and influence (Palmer,
1978: 82-3). Thailand became increasingly dependent on the United States for
loans and investments. In short, the ending of colonialism did not result in the
Ulltyillg of the economies of the ASEAN region to the needs of the advanced
industrial capitalist states.

The issue of conflict over natural resources must be situated in the
political, social, and cultural contexts of the countries in which they occur,
in this case the ASEAN states. The region as a whole will be examined in this
chapter, but the emphasis will be on the
Philippines.

2.3 The plunder of forest resources

It has been estimated that nearly two-thirds of the world's tropical rain
forests are to be found in South-East Asia, mostly in the Philippines, Sumatra,
and Borneo. The Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia account for approximately
66 per cent of worldwide exports of hardwood; other tropical countries provide
16 per cent, and the remainder comes from temperate countries (Asia Magazine,
1984: 16).

Rapid depletion of Philippine forest resources began during the Spanish
colonial period. The island of Cebu was completely stripped of its large
hardwood trees to provide lumber to build the Spanish galleons plying the
Manila-Acapulco trade route of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries American
colonialists further developed forest extraction and engaged in the wanton
exportation of logs to the home country. After the Second World War, a logging
boom erupted in Mindanao, particularly in the northeastern and southern parts of
the island. Foreign companies, especially American multinationals, pioneered
these ventures. Corporations such as Weyerhauser, GeorgiaPacific, Boise-Caseade,
and Findlay Millar were active participants in the exploitation of Mindanao
forest resources (Tadem, 1980: 46-7).

Environmental and Economic triplications of Depletion

The major issue on the extractive side is the depletion of the forest cover
and the wide-ranging implications of this phenomenon.

Although tropical rain forests cover less than 10 per cent of the earth's
surface, half of the world's plant and animal species populations are sheltered
by them (Asia Magazine, 1984: 16). These forests are massive reservoirs of
thousands of yet-undiscovered species.

Philippine forests have rapidly lost their trees. From 1952 to 1977 the rate
of depletion of forest reserves was 61 per cent (Tadem, 1980 47). Due to the
half-hearted implementation of conservation laws, the rate of forest destruction
exceeds reforestation by a margin of nine to one. In 1981 a series of floods
brought about by constant heavy rains in northeastern Mindanao left 283 people
dead, 14,000 injured, and thousands homeless (Asia Magazine, 1984: 16). This
part of Mindanao had been the site of the logging boom of the 1950s and 1960s,
and its forest area has been virtually denuded.

The pulp and paper mills that accompany the logging industry are notorious
sources of pollution from chemically contaminated wastes, which are often simply
dumped into the rivers and seas. The chemicals used in the mills also cause air
pollution, and fishing villages along coastal areas are adversely affected on
both counts. Fish producers in Agusan del Norte have filed a resolution opposing
the establishment of the Manila Paper Mills because the resulting pollution of
the Agusan River and the Mindanao Sea will damage the livelihood of thousands of
fishpond operators and individual fishermen (Bulletin Today, 1980). It had been
noted that Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP), the
country's sole newsprint producer, dumps its waste into Bislig Bay in Surigao
del Sur with little or no treatment.

The Philippines was the first of the ASEAN group to be extensively exploited
for its forest resources and it will likely lose all its virgin forest
designated for production purposes by 1990 at the latest, according to a survey
by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Logging and
wood-processing companies are aware of this, and their response has been to
shift their attentions to neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia.

But resources there are also running short. A 1977 national forest inventory
ordered by the federal government in Kuala Lumpur reported that 'the country's
timber resources will be depleted in about twelve years unless reforestation
measures are carried out urgently' (Rowley, 1977: 47). Sabah, which accounts for
46 per cent of Malaysia's total log production and exports 80 per cent of its
production, is expected to log its virgin forests within a period of ten years
if current rates of felling are maintained. Peninsular Malaysia, which had
drastically cut its log exports to only 2 per cent of production in 1979, has
begun to court log imports and may have to compete with Japan for Sabah's logs
(Gigot, 1979a: 52-3) Of Peninsular Malaysia's total land area of 35.2 million
acres, only 17 million (48 per cent) are still covered with some form of forest,
according to the Penang-based environmental group, Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM).

Despite the establishment of reforestation programmes by the Kuala Lumpur
government, log production declined by only 3 per cent overall in 1980, and this
was due almost entirely to the 17.8 per cent decline in Sabah (SAM, 1981 2).
Timber output in Peninsular Malaysia declined by only 1. 1 per cent, while in
Sarawak timber production rose by 15.1 per cent. In March 1981, the Ministry of
Primary Industries announced a government plan to reduce the tree-felling rate
from 922,000 acres per year to 385,000 by 1985 (SAM, 1981: 2). The Ministry
planned to replant, in Peninsular Malaysia, 65,000 acres by 1985 and a total of
500,000 acres from 1985 to 2000. This programme is considered insignificant in
the face of a national logging rate of almost 1 million acres per year.

Indonesia's forests contribute its second highest export eamings, after oil.
Overseas sales in 1976 totalled US$830 million. The country has approximately
120 million ha of tropical rain forest, 47 million ha of which is production
forest. However, excesses, such as rampant illegal logging, have endangered this
vast resource. Logging companies cut indiscriminately in many areas, and in the
process they cut down trees of only 40 to 45 cm, in violation of the legal
minimum of 50 cm, at times with the tacit approval of forestry officials
(Jenkins, 1977: 66). Thus, in many areas 'the whole forest canopy is being or
has been destroyed'. The irresponsibility of companies working their
concessions, coupled with overharvesting, will soon cause irreversible damage to
East Kalimantan's forests.

Widespread logging in Indonesia's outer islands did not occur until the late
1960s, when the new Suharto government adopted an opendoor policy towards
foreign investors. Timber exports rose 1,500 per cent from 1966 to 1971, and
one-third of foreign capital inflow was to logging through US, Japanese, and
Filipino companies (Grossman and Siegel, 1977: 2-3). Indonesia was widely
advertised as the alternative to the Philippines for an unrestricted supply of
timber for export. A total of 5.6 million ha were offered to investors for
exploitation. Weyerhauser, which has closed its operations in Mindanao, quickly
moved into Indonesia and occupied a one million acre concession, which it plans
to thoroughly deplete by 1990 the year its contract expires (Grossman and
Siegel, 1977: 7-8).

Effects of Logging on Agriculture

Logging operations inevitably come into conflict with traditional upland
farmers, many of whom belong to non-majority ethnic groups. Relying on
slash-and-burn agricultural systems, these hillside farmers depend on their
age-old farming practices for survival. Despite the propensity of officials to
place equal blame on them for the loss of forest lands, it is an
incontrovertible fact that many generations of swidden farming cannot equal the
destruction wrought by logging corporations in only a dozen or so years.

Thus, tribal groups are being squeezed out of their ancestral lands and
deprived of their means of livelihood in the name of development. The Manobos of
eastern Mindanao have been pushed out of the lowlands and into the forests by
settlers, agricultural companies, and ranchers. Now in their last area of
retreat, they are still being hounded out of existence. Farmers in One part of
East Kalimantan have been ordered not to grow rice to force them to rely on work
in the logging concessions (Grossman and Siegel, 1977: 7-8). In South
Kalimantan, natives were ordered to desist from continuing with their
traditional methods of farming or felling trees to build homes; otherwise, they
risked being accused as thieves.

Long-term effects of indiscriminate logging on the soil have also been
documented. Abundant tree cover reduces the speed at which rains hit the ground.
Without forests, the force of rains strips off the topsoil in which the
necessary nutrients that sustain plant life abound (SAM, 1981: 25). What remains
is a barren piece of ground with as much potential to support plants as a
desert. Siltation of rivers also takes place, blocking water passageways. The
1981 floods in north-eastern Mindanao were caused by heavy rains spilling off
barren mountains into the Agusan River. As the river's outlet was blocked by
large silt deposits, the flood-waves simply went back upstream, submerging homes
and fields to a depth of about 7 metres (Asia Magazine, 1984: 17).

Communities bordering areas where logging concessions operate are often
victims of the negative effects of company operations. Many of them have
occupied these areas for generations prior to the entry of the loggers. On the
other hand, communities built around the timber operations, where logging
workers and their families live, are nothing more than temporary camps whose
existence depends on the continued supply of timber. Once the resource is
exhausted, these communities are abandoned. Many families continually experience
this uprooting and dislocation as they follow the companies for the work they
provide.

Reforestation sometimes takes the form of encouraging the development of
'industrial tree farming'. Farmers growing food crops are being urged to grow
falcatta, giant ipil-ipil, rubber, and other fastgrowing but mainly softwood
trees instead, to supply the large timber processing plants being built by both
foreign and local investors, usually in partnership with the government. In
Mindanao, hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been reserved for tree
farms. Corporations not wanting to deal with small farms have undertaken the
cultivation of softwood trees for their own pulp and paper mills.

Tree farms are cropping up in the north-eastern Mindanao provinces of Agusan
del Norte and Agusan del Sur and in the southern Mindanao province of Davao del
Norte. Various conflicts have emerged. Applications by two large companies,
Manila Paper Mills (MPMI) and the Aguinaldo Development Corporation (ADECOR),
for the lease of tens of thousands of hectares have already been approved, with
thousands of hectares more to be added later. Settler farming communities will
most likely be evicted from their lands as a result. The companies are trying to
entice farmers into giving up their claims by offering them jobs on the tree
plantations or in the pulp and paper plants. The settlers are resisting,
however, and are working against the clock to have their claims titled at the
Bureau of Lands. The process is time-consuming as well as financially draining,
and both money and time are in short supply for the farmers.

PICOP has been the most aggressive in contracting small-scale farmers to grow
falcatta with loans available through funds provided by the World Bank and
channelled through the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) (Tadem, 1980:
48-9). But farmers cannot go fulltime into tree farming, as it takes seven years
before any income can be earned. Also, the terms of the contract tie the farmers
to PICOP, with the company dictating the purchase price. Earlier promises by
PICOP of large incomes have turned out to be false, and many farmers have
actually incurred losses due to the delays by PICOP in collecting the cut trees.
Although the farmers are totally dependent on PICOP, the company does not rely
on them completely for supplies of pulp because it operates its own 33 000-ha
tree plantation.

The tragic consequences of denudation can be observed in the case of the 24
500-ha watershed of Pantabagan in Nueva Ecija province in Central Luzon (ARE
Newsletter, 1981: 3). Some 14,000 families were relocated there to make way for
the huge Pantabagan Dam, inaugurated in 1976, and the area has been completely
denuded. The cause, according to a World Bank study, was excessive logging
operations. A number of government-built houses have slid down from the hillside
as heavy rains eroded the soft clay under the houses. These farming families
crowd the upper slopes of the watershed and try with little success to plant for
soil erosion is too swift and extensive. This area is located high above the
dam, so they cannot even make use of the irrigation from the project that caused
their resettlement and dislocation from lowland homes.

The Social Costs of the Wood Industry

Conditions in both logging areas and wood-processing plants leave much to be
desired. Wages are low, legally stipulated benefits are often withheld, and
housing facilities are inadequate. In this situation, labour-management
conflicts often arise, with workers demanding a greater share of the profits
reaped by the corporations.

In 1979 the US-owned Findlay Millar Timber experienced a yearlong strike by
its 1,000 workers, who were demanding the three months' wages withheld from them
by the company (Reyes, 1984). This confrontation between wood-industry workers
and the corporation was bitter, with management resorting to standard tactics of
harassment and deception to force the workers back to work. Other major strikes
in Mindanao-based wood companies were at Zamboanga Wood Products-40 per cent of
which was then owned by BoiseCaseade and at Sta. Clara Lumber in Davao. These
conflicts rarely end favourably for the workers, because their unions are short
on funds and some labour leaders sell out to management.

If the workers insist on carrying on their fight for higher wages and better
working and living conditions, the company can always close down its operations
and move to other places. Such decisions are also influenced by the fact that
with the rapid depletion of forests, companies would have to move on anyway.
When this happens, the workers are the hardest hit. Not having benefited from
the logging booms of the 1950s and barely able to eke out a marginal existence
in the succeeding decades of logging declines, workers have been left to fend
for themselves. The first casualties of the death of any industry the workers
and their families, just as they are always the last to taste the benefits of
any upturn.

Conflicts between Producers and Consumers

On the international level, there is conflict between the producing countries
and the consumers, the latter comprising countries from the developed world.
Most of the vital information regarding the world wood market is in the hands of
the consumers, and producers have little influence in shaping consumers' demands
(Khan, 1984: 4). Asian lumber, for example, is a buyer's market, with Japan
exercising a dominant role. Market-access problems increase with the degree of
processing. The European Economic Community (EEC) charges 13 per cent tariffs on
imports from South-East Asia; the United States excludes from its Generalized
System of Preferences (GSP) the most important species of South-East Asia, the
dipterocarps; and Japan totally excludes timber from its GSP (Khan, 1984: 4).
Log exports, on the other hand, usually enter duty-free.

One aspect of the problem is the low storage prospect of timber because of
its susceptibility to fungal and insect attacks. Retention of trees is deemed
impractical because of the need to respond effectively and promptly to market
changes, and the long distances between the producers and the market (Khan,
1984: 4). High transport costs also cut export earnings.

Japan has come under fire from timber-producing countries in the Asia-Pacific
region for 'plundering resources without replacing them and without regard for
the impact on local economies'; entering into agreements with 'comprador
concessionaires who [have] little loyalty to the producing countries'; and
'undermining the indepeudence of these countries through . . . economic
imperialism' (Awanohara, 1979: 88).

Japan has also been criticized for perpetuating the primary level of
production in wood-exporting countries and failing to accommodate the 'desire to
add increasing amounts of processing; and hence, value, to their products before
exporting them' (Awanohara, 1979: 88). Only after incessant and impatient
demands from the producing countries was some positive response from the
Japanese forthcoming; even then, movement has been slow. From the point of view
of Japan's own timber-processing industry, the development of local processing
in South-East Asia, for example, does not make sense. Japan's own industry is
large and labourintensive, and thus carries some electoral clout. It is also
protected by tariff barriers that 'encourage imports of unprocessed timber but
[put] a damper on value-added imports' (Awanohara, 1979: 88). According to
Awanohara, the Japanese government charges the following import duties on wood:

Unprocessed logs = 0 per cent Sawn timber = 5 per cent within GSP quota
and 10 per cent for remainder Veneer = 7.5 per cent within GSP quota and 15
per cent for remainder Plywood = 20 per cent.

Such barriers to trade only increase the distrust of developing countries
towards the First World, a feeling carried over from the colonial past in which
an international economic order highly favourable to the developed world was
fashioned and has largely continued to the present. However, the Third World is
becoming more aware of how to deal with a system that works against its
interests. Since the 19705, calls for a new international economic order have
been growing louder, and the developed world has been forced to listen and
respond. The successes of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) have inspired
others.

Like other producers of essential commodities exported mainly to First World
countries, timber producers have attempted to restructure the international wood
market. Private log producers in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua
New Guinea banded together to form the Council of Southeast Asian Lumber
Producers Association (SEALPA) in 1974. The group has reached specific
agreements on limiting log exports in order to stabilize prices and, for the
longer term, '[has] agreed to minimize log exports and maximize the export of
finished wood products' (Rowley, 1977 47). The more ambitious plan, however, is
to ultimately regulate world prices and protect the earnings of the producing
countries. SEALPA's supply-demand scenario for timber projected a growth in
demand far exceeding the supply for a three-year period from 1978 to 1980 (Asia
Yearbook, 1980 91-3). This was calculated to encourage the importation by Japan
of processed wood products. From 1975 the proportion of logs in total wood
imports had fallen at the rate of 1 per cent per year to 64 per cent in 1979.

Japan's reaction to the formation of SEALPA was typical of the attitude of
developed countries to calls for a new international economic order. In 1975,
SEALPA decided to control the export and production of logs for that year to
forestall an expected slump in log prices (Stat Romana, 1979: 88-90).
Confidently holding a five-month stockpile of logs and lumber, Japan
unilaterally slashed the buying prices of logs and lumber 'to break up any wood
and forest product cartel in the region' (Stat Romana, 1979: 87). It limited its
purchases to low-grade logs from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia and
cut the prices of Philippine logs from US$35/cu. m to only US$25/cu. m,
reportedly US$7 below production costs. Although a week after the cut-back the
Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) announced an acceptance of SEALPA's
decision, imports were still to be lower in 1975.

Since then, SEALPA has been registering its impact more as a forum than as a
cartel. A more effective group has been Komasi, comprising plywood producers
from Malaysia, South Korea, and Singapore, which has succeeded in setting a
minimum world price for plywood made from tropical logs (Gigot 1979b 53).

TABLE 2.5 - South-East Asian Log Production and Exports, 1979

Country

Log Production
(million cu. m)

Percentage of Log
Production Exported

Log Exports as
Percentage of Total Exports

Peninsular Malaysia

10.2

2

9

Sabah

11. 1

90

52

Philippines

6-7

23

-

Indonesia

31.81

59

-

Source: Far Eastern Economic Review 7 December 1979.1 Figure is a goal. Total 1978 log production was 26 million cu. m,
of which almost 70 per cent was exported.

An international cartel was in the making in 1979 when a member of the
International Islamic Fund approached a major supplier of sawmilling equipment
in Singapore (Gigot, 1979b 53). Claiming to represent a range of Islamic
interests this Singaporean businessman broached the idea of setting up a huge
timber-processing complex on the Batam Islands and other islands in the Riau
group in Indonesia. To ensure initial supplies, loggers from Sumatra would be
brought in. Processed timber would be sold and released at the best possible
prices. Malta would provide alternative storage for the timber. Later, loggers
in Sabah, Sarawak, the southern Philippines, and Kalimantan would be invited to
join in, and log exports to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would be stopped
altogether. All of these areas have substantial Islamic populations; therefore
prospects for co-operation are enhanced. Although there is no clear connection
with this plan, Kuwaiti investors had that same year bought into a 300,000-acre
concession in Sabah, a Saudi group was negotiating for another concession, and a
Saudi prince bought interests in Philippine sawmills.

An international wood cartel is not as easy to set up as one for oil (Gigot,
1979b 53). Most South-East Asian exporters are private entrepreneurs, so
unpleasant government intervention is needed to enforce the decisions of the
cartel. In addition to storage problems, timber has not been relatively
underpriced as long as oil had been. Substitutes also abound for tropical
timber, such as softwoods from temperature
countries.

2.4 The transformation of a natural resource: from agriculture to agribusiness

The distinction between forestry and agriculture is sometimes
a fine one. Shifting cultivators often follow in the wake of commercial loggers,
and because of the marginal character of the logged-over land, farming becomes a
tedious and unproductive undertaking. In 1974, the Philippine government
attempted to turn denuded forest lands into rice-growing areas by requiring
logging concessionaires 'to develop areas within their concessions . . . for the
production of rice, corn, and other basic staples to take care of the
consumption requirements of their workers and the people within their areas'
(Tadem, 1978). This law, which was known as Presidential Decree No. 472. was
never really implemented because it also granted exemptions to firms in
'financial distress'.

When the Philippines became a rice-exporting country in 1977,
it appeared on the surface that Marcos' agricultural policies were working after
all. In the midst of the euphoria surrounding the dramatic turnabout, official
propaganda conveniently disregarded the costs that accompanied the statistics of
increased production. As public awareness gradually grew about the reality-that
the economic and social costs far outweighed the benefits of the rice exports-a
severe economic crisis, beginning in 1983, suddenly cast the country back into
the familiar role of rice importer. This reversal underscored the fragility of a
food-production programme that was highly dependent on imports.

Indonesia does not rely on the importation of fertilizers for
its rice industry because it is an oil exporter, and the major fertilizers used
are oil-based. Yet, until 1986, the country was one of the world's major rice
importers. For fiseal year 1983-4, imports were estimated to reach 900 000
tonnes, a 172 per cent increase over the 1982-3 level. Indonesia's rice imports
reached the stage at which they affected the world market prices for the
commodity. This situation existed for a long time despite the fact that 51 per
cent of food-crop land was devoted to paddy fields and yearly growth stood at
4.8 per cent (Sajogyo, 1982: 48).

Thailand's case is different. Traditionally a rice exporter, the country has
long been considered a yardstick for determining the quality of rice traded in
the world market by other countries. The government relies heavily on foreign
exchange from rice exports to support a basically agrarian and primary-product
economy. The three years from 1982 to 1985 however, brought the rice industry to
a critical point. World market prices had been deteriorating: from a peak of
US$500/ton in mid-1981, the price had fallen to as low as US$200/ton by January
1985, a 56 per cent decline (Sricharatchanya, 1985: 48).

TABLE 2.6 - Production of Agricultural Commodities in ASEAN Countries,
Various Years ('000 tonnes)

Country

1969-1971

1977

1978

1979

Indonesia

Coffee

173

198

223

267

Tea

65

85

89

93

Sugar

10 322

14 709

14
880

15 995

Rubber.

838

835

900

851

Jute

1 189

1 288

1 497

1 445

Rice

19 136

23 356

25 781

26 35o

Palm-oil

218

525

610

640

Philippines

Coffee

48

82

105

122

Sugar

16 271

23 126

20 273

20 348

Banana

893

2 125

2 390

2 430

Pineapple

251

427

465

480

Rice

5
225

6 895

7
318

7 000

Malaysia

Cocoa beans

4

19

24

26

Rubber

1 285

1 613

1 607

1 617

Rice

1 696

1 922

1 527

2 161

Palm-oil

457

1 778

1 184

2 600

Thailand

Sugar

5 856

23 658

20 561

20 000

Banana

1 200

1 700

2 000

1 082

Pineapple

187

l 250

2 000

1 000

Rice

13 475

13 921

17 530

15 640

Source: FAO Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, various issues.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines and Thailand and, to a lesser
extent, Indonesia, agribusiness and commercial farming have been growing. This
is related to the modernization drive in agriculture in which various actors,
both local and foreign, are playing neatly assigned parts. Changes in the
social, economic, cultural, and political spheres are also taking place. As is
inevitable, the introduction of new methods of production, new philosophies of
growth, and new means of surplus generation have engendered conflicts on various
levels. The competition for land, for access to its product, and for shares of
the surplus are at the roots of conflicts arising in the agricultural sector.
The issues are seldom clear, particularly when judgments have to be made
regarding the effects of new methods. For example, it is still widely believed
that the dislocation of thousands of small farmers to make way for massive
hydroelectric projects is justified. The assumption is that the immediate
disruption of the productive lives of peasants is only temporary and that in the
long run, everyone will benefit from electricity Narrow-minded as this
perception may be, it is enough to convince other sectors of the population not
directly affected by these projects that sacrifices such as the dislocation of
communities must be accepted. Even the affected peoples are made to go along
with the scheme through a combination of persuasion, coercion, and intimidation.

The various conflicts that now characterize the competition
for land can be traced to the breakdown of subsistence farming in favour of
commercialized production, or in some cases, the subsumption of the former to
the latter. Subsistence production has its own contradictions, but since this
type of agriculture is no longer the dominant mode in the underdeveloped areas
in South-East Asia, it is more relevant to examine instead the widespread
'commoditization' that has become the characteristic trend.

The Modern Agricultural Context: Agribusiness

A pervasive characteristic of rural South-East Asia is the
inequality in the distribution of land. In Java, 55 per cent of 4.6 million
farming families own only 22 per cent of the land while 4 per cent or
approximately 400,000 families control 24 per cent (Sajogyo, 1982). Sixty per
cent of Javanese households have an average of only 0.2 ha. Tenancy rates in
Thailand's Central Plains were as high as 40 per cent as of the late 1970S and
continue to be so in the 1980s Farmers engaged in commercial crop production are
often in debt and failure to repay on time can mean loss of their lands. In the
Philippines, rural poverty has continuously risen, with almost 80 per cent of
rural families falling below the poverty line in the late 1980s Landlessness has
also increased, and dispossessed workers presently form the majority of the
Philippine rural labour force.

A relatively recent phenomenon is the development of large
plantations by multinational corporations, the state, or local capitalists for
the cultivation or processing of export crops. In the Philippines,
multinationals such as Del Monte, Dole, and United Brands pioneered and
controlled the banana export industry in Mindanao. Dole joined Del Monte in the
production and processing of pineapple for export. Dole also expanded its
pineapple operations into Thailand. Transnational agribusiness has exacerbated
the conflict between the production of food crops and export crops. Officially
welcomed by host governments, this type of agriculture represents a higher level
of foreign and local exploitation of resources with minimal benefits for the
poor sectors of society.

Agricultural modernization and increasing commercialization
have not necessarily meant social progress and economic prosperity. Agribusiness
expansion often results in the physical eviction of the actual cultivators.
Food-producing communities have been displaced by the development of the banana
and pineapple export industries in Mindanao. A Philippine corporate farming
programme launched in 1974 also resulted in displacement. In the early 1980s the
Philippine government joined with local entrepreneurs and Malaysian
transnationals to introduce large-scale palm-oil production in eastern Mindanao.
Several thousand settlerfarming households were displaced to make way for
Guthrie's 8 000-ha plantation. As late as 1976, the Soyear-old Del Monte
subsidiary, Philippine Packing Corporation, forcibly ejected 371 farmers in the
Pontian Plains in Bukidnon province by Sloughing through five barrios (PPI,
1983: I). In 1980, on the 13 000-ha Hacienda San Antonio-Sta. Isabel in llagan,
Isabela, 300,000 people were threatened with eviction by a large corporation
owned by businessman Eduardo Cojuangco, a Marcos crony (PPI, 1983: I). Anca
Corporation wanted to transform the newly purchased hacienda into an
agribusiness plantation growing coconut and ipil-ipil pulp trees.

The shift from food crops to export crops raises the issue of
priorities for agricultural production. severe problems of malnutrition among
the majority of the population, it would have been more beneficial if emphasis
had been placed on food production for domestic consumption rather than on
exports. Ironically, ASEAN countries are also food importers. Philippine and
Indonesian wheat imports from the United States under Public Law 480 constitute
a drain on local resources. Although PL 480 allows importing countries to pay in
their local currency, the process has the overall effect of creating a need for
a product that previously was not in the local diet. Even during the years of
rice exportation, poor Filipino farmers subsisted on meagre diets that were
often nutritionally inadequate.

Agribusiness Versus Land Reform

Agribusiness development brings about conflict between itself
and land reform and equity-oriented rural programmes. Large-scale plantations
necessarily involve the concentration of land in the hands of a few individuals
and corporations. In the Philippines, a land reform programme initiated upon the
declaration of martial law in 1972 has been proceeding slowly. Covering only 33
per cent of tenanted lands and 6.8 per cent of total crop area, the Operation
Land Transfer (OLT) programme had, as of 1983, benefited only 9 per cent of its
targeted number of farms (MAR, 1983). In Indonesia, since the Suharto coup, the
land reform programme has been frozen, and those clarnouring for its
implernentation are invariably said to be communist-inspired.

A successful land reform programme is a necessity in a
country where feudal and semi-feudal relations of production persist. These
relations are sources of serious social conflict. Agrarian movements in
South-East Asia, and in other areas where similar conditions prevail, revolve
around issues of oppressive precapitalist land tenure arrangements such as
share-cropping, exorbitant land rent, and usury. Although agribusiness sometimes
does away with the old mode of production, it often replaces it with more
exploitative structures. In many cases, agribusiness exists alongside old
subsistence or feudal modes, the reason being that companies can keep the cost
of production low by making the producer directly responsible for reproducing
its labour power. Thus labour reproduction does not enter into the determination
of plantation wages, which can then be maintained at levels lower than
subsistence. This can be observed in both the Philippine and Thai experiences.
Wages of Filipino sugar workers are often below subsistence, and if relied on
solely, cannot sustain a worker's existence. But since field-work is seasonal,
the worker can return to his home (frequently an outlying island) and engage in
subsistence or share-cropping cultivation.

Even if plantations are able to completely transform tenants
into fulltime agricultural workers who depend wholly on their wages, conflicts
still arise. Workers discover that their living conditions are no better and are
sometimes worse. The highest yearly income of a Filipino plantation worker in
1983 (as legislated by a presidential wage order) would amount to P8,600. If two
family members are working (and this is rare), the total income would still fall
below the estimated minimum subsistence income of approximately P20,036 a year
required for a rural family (Almazan and Ibanez, 1984). Unlike tenants,
plantation workers have no alternative sources of food and income. To add to the
gravity of the situation, few plantations pay the minimum legislated wage to
their workers. Corporations can easily apply for and secure exemptions from the
minimum-wage rule by pleading insolvency or a distressed situation. Another way
by which companies circumvent the law is to hire non-permanent contractual or
probationary workers and renew their contracts every few months.

Agribusiness and the National Economies

Agribusiness also leads to a monopolistic type of capitalism.
Huge capital resources and extensive international marketing contacts are needed
for a successful operation. Only the largest corporations, often multinationals,
have access to or control over such resources. Conflicts arise between these
huge monopolies or oligopolies and the aspirations of local entrepreneurs for a
greater share of production and the market. Often local competitors are pushed
out after being driven to bankruptcy. Those who manage to survive inevitably
enter into joint-venture arrangements with the foreign firms and end up as
junior partners. The dominance of multinational agribusiness over certain types
of agricultural products in underdeveloped countries serves as a hindrance to
the full development of local industries under the control of national
capitalists. Indigenous development and nationally oriented growth do not take
place at all.

In some instances, however, the transfer of control from
foreign to local firms results in the substitution of native, often
statecontrolled, companies for foreign monopolies. In the Philippines, marketing
monopolies in the sugar and coconut industries were established with the aid of
government decrees. Ostensibly the monopolies are private firms, and private
individuals sit as board directors. However, the presence of government
officials and the fact that marketing control was achieved only through state
intervention makes government denials ring hollow. Public outcry against this
anomalous arrangement, the disenchantment of a significant section of local
entrepreneurs left out of the lucrative market, and demands by no less than the
International Monetary Fund and the World Hank for the dismantling of the
monopolies led to certain steps being taken by the Marcos government to
accommodate other local businessmen. The individuals who controlled both the
sugar and coconut industries were leading Marcos cronies. However, it remains to
be seen whether these arrangements can be overturned under the Aquino
government.

Even as agribusiness firms and state monopolies are
developing highly integrated and large-scale agricultural systems, with
deleterious effects on society and the national economy, small-scale farming
(especially of rice and maize) has had to cope with the technological changes
brought about by the Green Revolution that began in the 1960s (Feder, 1983).
Green Revolution technology involves the extensive use of high-yielding
varieties of seedlings (HYVs), massive inputs of fertilizers and chemical
pesticides, a degree of mechanization, and, in some cases, supervised credit.

Although the new technology may have increased crop
production, this has been achieved at the cost of damaging the natural ecosystem
of paddy fields. Rivers and farm animals are poisoned and extra sources of food
(fish and snails) are lost to the farmers (Fegan, 1982). The import-dependent
character of the new system poses even greater problems and conflicts. Studies
in the Philippines have shown that the tremendous increase in the costs of
production due to the expensive inputs have exceeded crop-yield increases by a
margin of five to one. In the Philippines, the prices of fertilizers and
pesticides increased by more than 100 per cent in 1983-4 alone. Farmers in
Central Luzon cut down on fertilizer use or planted less to minimize costs. The
result was a decline in rice production and the government had to begin
importing rice.

Government support prices for rice farmers have been
inadcquate to meet rising costs in Thailand as well. In 1985 Thai farmers were
demanding a paddy price of B3,500 a kwien (ton), which is B 500 more than the
national average farmgate price. Declining paddy prices in the Thai central
plains have forced farmers into greater indebtedness running into tens of
thousands of baht each (Sricharatchanya, 1985: 49). The government's dilemma is
that it must maintain low farmgate prices for rice in order to subsidize the
urban consumer. Instead of taking steps to lower the costs of farm production as
an alternative to raising rice prices, governments are apparently locked into
the narrow perception that the only factors subject to state intervention are
the farm support price and the retail price of rice. Thus the consumer is pitted
against the farmer, and both groups are protesting. Farmers' groups are asking
why the fertilizer and pesticide companies (mostly multinationals) are not being
made to bear some of the costs. Besides, the farmers argue, they are consumers,
too.

The Political Consequences

The conflict between agribusiness interests and farmers in
the Philippines was brought to a climax when some 5,000 farmers belonging to the
Alliance of Central Luzon Farmers (AMGL) staged protest Marches in several
provinces on 4-5 February 1985, ending at the Ministry of Agriculture office in
Metro Manila. The peasants were joined by hundreds of supporters from the
student, worker, urban poor, and professional sectors in a camp-in demonstration
in front of the ministry. The AMGL presented the following demands:

1. A drop in fertilizer and pesticide prices to the 1 October
1983 level; 2. A new small-farmer credit scheme in which interest rates do
not exceed 12 per cent per year; 3. A write-off of all small-farmer debts
incurred in the government Masagana 99 programme. 4. Strengthening of the
palay (paddy) support price without increasing the price of rice; 5. Lowered
gasoline and electricity costs in order to minimize irrigation fees; and 6.
Establishment of a nationalistic agro-industrialization programme and
implementation of genuine land reform (AMGL,1985).

A series of dialogues between peasant leaders and the
Agriculture Minister during the demonstration ended in a stalemate as officials
contended they were powerless to act on the demands and that only the President
could help the peasants. The peasants then demanded to meet with Marcos himself,
but before this confrontation could be arranged, government troops moved in and
violently dispersed the peasants in the early morning hours of 13 February 1985.
The farmers and their supporters were chased 3 km to the nearby campus of the
University of the Philippines, where they were sheltered by students and the
Catholic Church. Though none of their demands were granted, the farmers had made
their point and had been heard.

A resurgence of peasant unrest is also brewing in Thailand.
Deteriorating conditions for the Thai peasantry set the backdrop for a three-day
demonstration by 3,000 farmers joined by members of the opposition Chart Thai
Party in front of Government House on 8-IO January 1985 (Sricharatchanya, 1985:
49). The peasants came mostly from the central and upper central plain
provinces. Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanond averted a major political crisis by
paying the demonstrators a predawn visit on 10 January. In this instance, Prem
handled the farmers in a better way than his Philippine counterpart; while the
Thai farmers remain dissatisfied, an immediate crisis was averted.

These two examples bring up the issue of peasant
organizations and their role in the process of rural change. ASEAN governments
generally regard independent rural organizing efforts with suspicion and try to
set up state-sponsored groups that champion the maintenance of existing
conditions. The extreme case is Indonesia, where the government takes an almost
paranoid attitude towards peasant organizations formed independent of state
supervision (Mortimer, 1975). Suharto's fear is that there will be a revival of
the militant Parti Komunis Indonesia-led organizations that disrupted Javanese
society during Sukarno's rule with their revolutionary calls for change among
the hundreds of thousands of peasants they mobilized. Because of this history
and the government's attitude, minimal rural organizing is undertaken in Java
and outer islands.

In the Philippines, there has been a long history of peasant
organizing dating from the American colonial period (Constantino, 1975).
National organizations arose concurrently with the founding of the Communist
Party in 1930, with heaviest activity in Central Luzon, a traditional area of
agrarian unrest. Despite the proscription of the CPP, these organizations
survived, but they were finally made illegal shortly after the Second World War.
The final burst of activity was the abortive Huk peasant rebellion from 1946 to
1954, which was violently suppressed and ended a traumatic first phase in
radical peasant organizing. In the years that followed, only moderate and
church-sponsored peasant groups were active. Radical groups did not re-emerge
until 1964, and a split within the CPP in 1967 led to the birth of a new
communist party and the NPA. The NPA currently numbers around 10,000-15,000
armed regulars scattered all over the country. Its main aim is to carry out an
agrarian revolution in the Philippines with the peasantry as its main force. The
major political conflict in the Philippine countryside today is that between the
NPA and the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The NPA platform is based on the
issues of lowering land rent and eliminating usury and, in the long term, the
implementation of a comprehensive land reform programme that will redistribute
land to the landless and organize production around co-operatives and collective
farms where
feasible.

2.5 Conflicts over mineral resources

The struggles over the world's mineral resources by various
countries has often provided impetus for wars, whether of a limited scope or
world-wide. Shortages of iron and steel for Germany's industries and the spectre
of 4 million workers going jobless are said to have influenced the decision of
the Kaiser to participate in the First World War (Eckes, 1979). Japan in the
Second World War coveted the rich mineral resources of East and South-East Asia
to support an industrial expansion programme.

South-East Asia, particularly the ASEAN countries, holds major reserves of
some of the world's most important and strategic minerals (Balai Asian Journal,
1981:14-17). The Philippines is the third largest producer of chromite after
South Africa and Zimbabwe it has the third largest reserves of cobalt after
Zaire and New Caledonia; it was the ninth largest producer of copper in 1980;
and it is a major producer of nickel and silver. Indonesia has the highest
reserves of tin in the world24 per cent of 10 million tonnes. Malaysia, which
ranked fifth in reserves, produced the most tin in 1980 25. 36 per cent of the
world total. Bauxite deposits are found in both Indonesia and Malaysia; zinc is
found in both Thailand and the Philippines. Thailand also produces tungsten ore,
lead ore, antimony, iron ore, and manganese.

The potential for conflict lies in the relationships between
these countries and the world's major industrial powers, which are heavily
dependent on the supply of raw or lightly processed minerals to fuel their
economics. Data compiled by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI) show that Japan's degree of dependence on other countries for
key minerals in 1982 was as follows: coal (81.8 per cent), iron ore (98.7 per
cent), copper (96.0 per cent), lead (83.9 per cent), zinc (68.5 per cent), tin
(98.4 per cent), aluminium (100 per cent), and nickel (100 per cent) (MlTI,
1982: 100). Asian countries are the main source of Japan's raw materials,
particularly minerals.

In 1974 a major trade crisis arose between the Philippines
and Japan (Stat Romana, 1976: 88-90). In December 1974 the three major buyers of
copper concentrates in Japan-Mitsubishi, Nippon, and Mitsui Smelting-announced a
30 per cent cutback on purchases of Philippine copper effective the following
month. Japan's dumping of refined copper in the international market reduced
foreign demand for the Philippine produce while internal recession resulted in a
slump in domestic sales. Since 80 per cent of Philippine copper was sold to
Japan at that time, the cutback severely affected the country's trade balance,
which showed a larger deficit compared to the previous year. The Philippine
government tried to invoke the newly ratified Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and
Navigation with Japan in urging Tokyo to withdraw the cutback, but the Tanaka
government rejected the proposal and the crisis was extended up to the middle of
1975.

Another aspect of international disputes over minerals is
related to the moves towards industrialization made by developing countries, as
seen in the plans to set up mineral-processing facilities in their own areas.
The Philippines' plans to set up an integrated steel mill have been on the
drawing board for many years but have not been implemented because of the lack
of cooperation from Japan. Instead, what the Philippines obtained through
Kawasaki Steel, a Japanese conglomerate, is the now-infamous iron-ore sintering
plant. Thirtytwo per cent of the US$250 million copper smelter's equity ended up
in the hands of a consortium of Japanese firms, whick also constructed the plant
from funds provided by the Export-lmport Bank of Japan (Tadem, 1983: 107-8).
Fifty-eight per cent of the plant's output is committed for export to Japan. In
order to repay the loan-at a high 18 per cent interest refining charges have
been set at a level higher than that charged by Japanese plants. Filipino mining
companies, which have been ordered by presidential decree to sell a fixed
percentage of their production to the smelter, have repeatedly complained about
this imposition. Lately, it was discovered that the plant's facilities were
faulty, and a few months into production it had to shut down for major repairs.

Another case in point of Japan's exploitation of the Third
World's need for technological and financial support and mineral resources is
the Asahan aluminium project in North Sumatra, which includes an aluminium
refinery and a hydroelectric plant, costing US$1 billion. The second largest
Japanese investment in Asia, this project has raised a host of issues touching
on national development, resource extraction, social dislocation, and
environmental degradation which are discussed more fully in Yoko Kitazawa's
chapter in this volume. Fears have also been expressed that the project will
only reinforce the dependence of the Indonesian economy on Japan.

Foreign exploitation of the natural resources of Third World
countries is also exemplified by the Gunung Bijih copper mine in Irian Jaya
(Seigel, 1976). The first mining venture approved by the Suharto government, it
is a transnational venture involving US, West German, and Dutch corporations.
Freeport Minerals, a Texas-bascd American firm, is the main beneficiary of the
project and was awarded a generous work contract by the Indonesian government,
which gives it a virtually free hand in the 38 square mile contract area, in
addition to granting a three-year tax holiday.

The mine began operations in February 1973, and during the
next 23 months it earned profits amounting to three times Freeport's original
equity investment. Because the firm's contract specified that it need not pay
dividends until 1 January 1987, the Indonesian government sought a renegotiation
of terms in order to cash in on the windfall. The resulting adjustments,
however, did not cause any substantial loss for Freeport, even though it agreed
to forgo the second and third years of its tax holiday.

Effects of Mining on Local Communities

Large-scale foreign-supported mining operations and their
expansion not only affect Third World economies at the national level but would
also have an impact on the livelihood of farming communities who are forced out
by the companies. A case study of the growth of Atlas Consolidated Mining and
Development Corporation in Cebu province in the Philippines shows the gradual
takeover by the company of agricultural lands (McAndrew, 1983: 535). Atlas is
reported to be one of the top five mining firms in the world. In the town of
Toledo, where Atlas has its main copper mining operations, data from the Bureau
of Census and Statistics show a marked decrease in the number of farms planting
maize (the province's staple food) and the area planted to the crop. In 1960,
5,074 Toledo farms were planting maize over an effective crop area of 12 549 ha.
Eleven years later, only 1,570 farms were still operating on an effective crop
area of only 2 500 ha. Total maize production also dropped from 149,794 cavans
(1 cavan = 50 kg) in 1960 to 18,715 cavans in 1971. In 1960 more than half of
Toledo's total population were considered to be farmers, but this dropped to
only one-fourth by 1970-1 (McAndrew, 1983: 53-5).

The McAndrew study cited here also revealed that few farm
families displaced by Atlas were taken on by the company as employees. Citing a
survey by a University of the Philippines team, the study pointed out that only
14.5 per cent of Atlas rankand-file workers lived in Toledo. Most of the farmers
displaced by the mine simply migrated out of the town.

Mining operations often pose grave dangers to the safety of
mine workers and surrounding communities. Inadequate safety measures could
result in landslips, the bursting of bunds, and other mishaps. In Malaysia, a
single landslide in Gunung Ceroh in 1973 killed 30 people, and 29 more died in
twelve landslips from September 1974 to November 1976 (CAP, 1978). The gravel
pump method used by more than 55 per cent of Malaysian tin mines is often
responsible for accidents resulting in deaths. Malaysian tin mining had its
blackest week in March 1981 when 27 people died in three separate landslips
within a period of 8 days: in Puchong (19 deaths), Kampar (5 deaths), and
Tanjung Tuallang (3 deaths). From 1963 to 1981, there were fifteen major mining
disasters in Malaysia, with a total of 157 lives lost.

Environmental hazards are also a by-product of the extraction
and processing of minerals. Mining generates a high percentage of waste
materials. Only a small portion of pulverized rocks is extracted-e.g. 0.05 per
cent of gold and 0.5 per cent of copper. The rest is impounded in tailing ponds
and rock dams. Thus, more than 99 per cent of extracted earth and rocks turn to
waste or silt. The adverse impact of these wastes on local communities is
receiving increasing documentation. For example, in 1980 some 3,000 farmers in
La Union province in Northern Luzon filed for damages to an area of farmland
comprising some 3.782 ha that had been affected by mine tailings from three
mining firms (Danguilan-Vitug, 1980: 19, 23). The farmers asked for pI,300 each
as compensation for the loss of one year's harvest. A team from the Ministry of
Agriculture inspected the damage and estimated the loss caused by the mine
tailings at 20 cavans/ha/yr. Thus, instead of harvesting 60-80 cavans/ha/yr, the
farmers produced only 40-60 cavans/ha/yr.

In the llocos region, also in Northern Luzon, four major
rivers are heavily polluted, thus affecting the livelihood of nearly 500,000
farming families (Belena, 1980 9). The Bureau of Soils has confirmed that mine
wastes discharged into these rivers cement soil in irrigated rice lands and thus
choke the rice paddies. Moreover, waste from mines, unlike eroded topsoil,
renders rice-fields infertile. An ad hoc committee on pollution created by the
Provincial Regional Office for Development discovered that 75 000 ha of farmland
in Pangasinan and La Union provinces are directly affected by pollutants from
the mines in Benguet. Nineteen towns in these two provinces receive fine sand,
cyanide, and mercury from the mines every year. Rice harvests have dropped
between 5 and 40 per cent yearly with the damage in the two provinces estimated
at P388 million/yr.

Traditional fishing grounds also suffer from pollution from
mining. Aquatic life has all but disappeared from the Agno River. In 1980 a team
of researchers from Silliman University conducted an underwater study of marine
life in and around the tailing discharge area off the coast of Toledo in Cebu
(McAndrew, 1983 60-1) It was discovered that within the vicinity of the
pipeline, all the animals found were dead, and the ocean bottom was heavily
silted and devoid of benthic organisms. The report stated that 'it is difficult
to attribute the death of these animals to factors other than the acute
sedimentation of the bottom brought about by the dumping of mine tailings' from
the Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corporation (McAndrew, 1983). Dr
A. S. Alcala, head of the research team, concluded forcefully that 'in the light
of recent data on marine pollution by mine tailings dumped directly to the sea,
such as those of Atlas . . . it is a mistake to consider disposal of copper
mining wastes to the sea a safe procedure' and that 'sea disposal of mine
tailings is inimical to sea life, especially the benthic forms' (McAndrew,
1983).

The Social Costs of Mining Activities

Mine workers receive relatively low wages in spite of the
hard physical work and danger they face. In the Benguet gold mines in Northern
Luzon, miners strip to their underwear before they enter or leave the
underground mines and are subjected to the radioactive rays of a metal detector.
Constant daily exposure to these harmful rays has resulted in various ailments
to the miners, including rapid ageing, general malaise, and loss of sexual
potency. In 1978, 1,138 Benguet workers resigned for health reasons. Conditions
in the mines are appalling, as described in the following report:

Crawling into the mine tonnel is a whole new nightmare.
Extending some 60 miles, the labyrinth weaves into the core of the earth from
3,000 to 5,000 feet underground At that depth, temperatures soar to a blistering
loo degrees Fahrenheit, so hot that miners don nothing but briefs and helmets
for work. Like overheated machines, these miners are cooled periodically by
dousing from a water hose. The dark and dank tunnels also expose them to dust,
grime and toxic gases. Inadequate oxygen is another risk.... The biggest spectre
that haunts them, however, is the dreaded cave-in. Blasting rocks to ferret out
the ore, miners expose themselves constantly to landslides, failing rocks, and
the very real possibility of being buried alive (Bala' Asian Journal, 1981: 24)

Conditions for the families of miners are just as bad. At
Benguet, the 'free housing' means a 'one-room affair, 3 by 7 meters, shared by
two families, totalling 10 to 17 persons', and a family of six 'sleeps in an
area the size of a dining table, elevated from the floor ... while another
family sleeps underneath' (Bala' Asian Journal, 1981: 24).

The low wages and poor working conditions have precipitated
many conflicts between mine workers and mine owners. Perhaps the longest mine
workers' strike in South-East Asia occurred at the Atlas copper mines in Cebu
(McAndrew, 1983). Started in 1966 with a walk-out by almost the entire
work-force, it continued into 1985, with some 800 to 1,000 workers of the
original 4,000 still on strike. The workers originally asked for housing
allowances, more decent transportation to and from work sites, salary increases,
and safety equipment. The conflict dragged on because the company, which was
largely owned by foreign nationals and corporations, consistently refused to
negotiate with the union and instead invited another union to organize in an
effort to break the strike. The company even specially constructed a camp for
two companies of Philippine Constabulary (PC) troops to police the strike. Seabs
flown in by helicopter continued the work of the strikers. Despite the dispute,
Atlas that year (1985) experienced its most profitable season ever, and although
reluctant to share this windfall with its workers, it declared a stock dividend
of 25 per
cent.

2.6 Development and tribal peoples: resistance to displacement

The survival of a large number of tribal peoples in
South-East Asia is increasingly being threatened by the development and
implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects that are designed to
maximize the extraction and utilization of natural resources. On one side of the
conflict are ranged the national government and its economic planners,
international funding agencies, giant foreign corporations and their local
partners, and the military. Against the enormous power wielded by the forces of
the establishment stand the relatively small communities of tribal peoples with
their 'pre-modern' concepts of property ownership, their simple modes of
production and selfsufficient economic systems, and their communal styles of
living. They often are fighting a losing battle.

In Belaga, Sarawak, there have been plans for two
hydroelectric dams financed by the Federal government to be constructed across
the Balui River in Gian Bakun (SCS News, 1984). At a total cost of M$9 billion
with a power output of 2 400 MW, and covering an area of 600 sq. km, the project
will be the largest in South-East Asia. The power to be generated will be more
than enough for Sabah and Sarawak's projected industrial power needs, so it is
also proposed that electricity from the project be sold to the Philippines,

Indonesia, and Singapore, as well as Peninsular Malaysia.
This would involve the laying of the longest cable in the world-672 km.

For the 10,000-12,000 people living in the area, however, the
hydroelectric project can only mean an end to their way of life with no bright
prospects for the future. The people comprise the Kayan, Kenyah, Kejaman, Ukit,
Penan, and other ethnic groups. They were never informed or consulted about the
project, and they are apprehensive about what the dams will do to the rivers
that are their chief means of communication and transport. The rivers have
already been polluted by the activities of logging companies, which have refused
to pay compensation for the damages.

In Northern Luzon, in the Kalinga-Apayao and Mountain
provinces, tribal hill peoples are struggling against the incursions of giant
dam projects that will mean their extinction as a people (Caring, 1980). The
Chico River is the longest and most elaborate river system in the Cordillcra
mountain ranges in Northern Luzon. Four dams, with a total capacity of 1 010 MW,
are to be built with funds from the World Bank. Officially named the Chico River
Basin Development Project (CRBDP), it would cover an area of 1 400 sq. km. Total
affected population is estimated at 100,000 in six towns in Mountain Province
and four towns in Kalinga-Apayao. These people belong to the Kalinga and Bontoc
tribal groups. The lands in question are the ancestral properties of the
communities and are considered sacred.

Chico IV alone would uproot more than 5,000 Kalingas from
their ancestral villages, destroy 1,200 stone-walled rice terraces, and ruin 5O0
ha of valuable fruit trees. Traditionally involved in tribal wars among
themselves, the people saw the need to unite in order to safeguard their homes,
families, and heritage. Thus in 1975 began the struggle of the Kalinga and
Bontoc peoples against the Chico dam project. The local movement became a
national symbol of protest against similar projects in other regions of the
country and an international issue that drew the attention of people all over
the world facing similar problems. The area was heavily militarized as the
tribes prepared to resist the dam at all costs. Inevitably, the NPA began
gathering support and was able to win over many of the tribal residents. The
government tried to gain the support of tribal leaders through bribery,
intimidation, and force, but the Kalingas and Bontocs persisted. Finally, the
government relented under local and international pressure and the World Bank
itself decided to postpone the dam project. In the meantime, more than 100
people had died.

While attention was being showered on the Chico dam, the
government was quietly building an even bigger project farther north in
Kalinga-Apayao (Ibon Facts and Figures, 1979). Known as the Apayao-Abulug River
Hydro-Electric Development Project, it was projected to cost about P5.2 billion
to construct and will inundate 9 400 ha where some 18,000 members of the Isneg
tribal group live in the town of Kabugao. It appears the National Power
Corporation (NPC) has learned the wrong lesson from the Chico experience.
Instead of becoming more open about development plans and how they affect the
people in Apayao, the NPC seems to have become more secretive, in the hope of
avoiding another public outcry of the same magnitude as the Chico controversy.

In Abra province, also in Northern Luzon, some 55,000
Tingguian tribal peoples were involved in confrontation beginning in 1977 with
the Cellophil Resources Corporation (O'Connor, 1981: 5). Owned by a close friend
of President Marcos, Cellophil began operations on its 200,000-acre logging
concession which it had acquired in 1972 and 1974. The company set out to
construct a pulp and paper mill and planned to expand into a rayon-staple fibre
plant in neighbouring La Union province. Life was made difficult for the
villagers by Cellophil. Those who refused to sell their lands had to fence off
their property or were accused of trespassing; bulldozers filled up irrigation
and drainage ditches; the mill rapidly destroyed fishing, one of the Tingguian's
alternative sources of livelihood; pasturelands for the water buffalo were lost;
and the people faced the depletion of their forests as well as the likelihood of
erosion, landslips, floods, and drought.

Like their neighbours the Kalingas, the Tingguians fiercely
resisted Cellophil, and the Marcos government responded by launching a military
campaign against the protectors beginning in March 1977. Sympathetic church
leaders were hunted down and persecuted. One parish priest, a native Tingguian
named Fr. Conrado Balweg, was forced to go underground and later joined the NPA.
Many farmers have been detained, and numerous military abuses, including the
killing of civilians, have been committed. Because of the intensified military
campaigns, hundreds of residents have evacuated into towns in the northern part
of Mountain Province (Biag, 1983).

These cases point to the seeming irreconcilability of the
many conventional viewpoints regarding national development and the interests of
tribal peoples in South-East Asia. Governments must recognize the rights of
tribal groups and strive to preserve and develop their societies within the
context of their centuries-old systems, instead of pursuing a policy of
extermination of traditional cultures in the name of modernization and progress.
Otherwise, national unity can never be
achieved.

2.7 Natural resource abuses: a time for change

The extraction, transformation, and utilization of natural
resources have resulted in great damage to the environment and spawned conflicts
at various levels between labour and capital, corporations and tribal
communities, and governments of the developed and the developing worlds. The
role of the state as the primary agent for the supervision and disposition of
natural resources is a crucial factor in the analysis of these conflicts.
Related to this is the rise of militarization, especially in areas where the
victims of development have begun to fight back and assert their rights.

The depletion of forest and, to a certain extent, mineral
resources has already reached crisis proportions in South-East Asia. The
degradation of the ecosystem only emphasizes the critical nature of the problem.
The displacement of local communities, including tribal peoples from their homes
and traditional sources of livelihood without adequate alternatives being
offered is a violation of human rights. While corporations reap large profits
from their operations, the workers and their families subsist below the poverty
line and endure poor living conditions. Labour conflicts are immediately
traceable to the exploited condition of the workers in the forest and mineral
industries. In agriculture, which is a transformation of a land based resource,
peasant land rights are constantly being violated by the expansion of
agribusiness concerns as land reform programmes are half-heartedly implemented,
if at all. Food crops are being replaced by export crops, and malnutrition
remains a major problem.

Industrialized countries are heavily dependent on raw
material producing countries for mineral and forest products, but they also
control international trade and dictate the prices as well as the traffic in
such goods. Capital and technology are also monopolized by the First World.
These countries are generally indifferent to the development of the processing
capabilities of the primary-product producing countries, and in cases in which
transfer of technology is undertaken, it has been confined to the less desirable
types such as heavy-polluting or energy-consuming ones.

There is obviously a need to change existing priorities for
development in the ASEAN countries. A stronger position must be taken against
the monopolistic control being exercised by the developed countries over local
resources. Considering that ASEAN countries possess sizeable forest and mineral
reserves, the possibilities for these states to come together and demand a
revision of trade and investment patterns are bright and attainable. Presenting
a unified position, ASEAN countries can enter into negotiations with raw
material-importing countries and arrive at mutual agreements. The industrial
countries must be made to realize that unless they agree to negotiate for
change, their traditional sources of primary products may be lost or unilateral
restructuring may have to be undertaken.

Internal conflicts are a different matter, however. The
governments of the ASEAN states range from mildly to overtly authoritarian. In
many cases, internal sources of tension such as labour conflicts and peasant
unrest have been dealt with by state repression. In this way, governments lose
their credibility with the population and popular sympathy shifts to opposition
groups, including those promoting radical alternatives. Bureaucratic anomalies,
financial scandals, widespread corruption, and foreign biased economic
programmes all serve to erode the government's position. The state becomes
identified with the interests of logging and mining companies, usurious
international funding agencies, and foreign agents. It is not surprising that
official policies are perceived to have benefited only these interests while
causing great harm to the peasantry, workers, and tribal
communities.

Carino, Joanna K. (1980), 'The Chico River Basin Development
Project: A Case Study of National Development Policy', paper presented at the
Third Annual Conference of the Anthropological Association of the Philippines,
Manila, 22-27 April.

Chiengkul, Witayakorn (1983), The Effects of Capitalist
Penetration on the Transformation of the Agrarian Structure in the Central
Region of Thailand (1960-1980), Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Social
Research institute, pp. 30-1, 37-8, 45, 47.